• How climate change will brew a bad-tasting, expensive cup of coffee | Environment | The Guardian
    http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/28/climate-change-bad-expensive-coffee-ipcc

    Coffee drinkers may see the effect in their cups, but the 25m rural households around the globe whose livelihoods depend on coffee will be hit far harder.

    The world’s foremost climate science group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), will include the effect of warming on coffee as part of a landmark report published next Monday on the global impacts of climate change. It is expected to conclude: “The overall predictions are for a reduction in area suitable for coffee production by 2050 in all countries studied. In many cases, the area suitable for production would decrease considerably with increases of temperature of only 2.0-2.5C.”

    The IPCC will report that in Brazil, the world’s biggest coffee producer, a temperature rise of 3C would slash the area suitable for coffee production by two-thirds in the principal growing states of Minas Gerais and São Paulo and eliminate it in others. While growing will become possible in states further south, this will not compensate for losses further north. An IPCC report on the science of climate change published in September projected the world will warm by 2.6-4.8C by the end of the century without deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

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